These lines are being written on
Tuesday, August 1, 1950.Forty-six
years ago this morning, the erection of our old school building, except for the
foundation, sills and sleepers, began.The carpenter was Toby W. Richmond, one of the best workmen we ever
saw.A carpenter who lost no time and
did his work in a thorough manner.He
lived until a few months ago and died at the ripe age of nearly 90 years.

The old school at Mace’s Hill,
erected probably about 1875, was the first place of learning we ever saw.It stood on the hillside on the site of the
present building, and was of logs, with weatherboarding and ceiling of yellow
poplar.It had two windows on each side
and one at the rear.The one door was
in the lower end and was perhaps five feet from the ground.Steps on either side led to this door.Up these steps we trudged on our first day
at school, which was Tuesday after the second Monday in August, 1898, when we
were seven years and one month old.We
knew our abc’s on starting and soon got to where we could spell and read and
write.In our second term of school,
the next year, we learned the multiplication table in a matter of a few
hours.Our first term lasted three
months and the second term was of about the same length.Children of today have three or four times
as good an opportunity to secure an education as did the boys and girls of 50
years ago or more.

Our old school building burned on
November 20, 1903, about four thirty in the afternoon.Cal and his brother, Tom, were shucking corn
in a crib when our sister, Mary began to call out loudly.“The school house is on fire.”We lived in sight of the building and soon
saw the flames “running” along the top of the building as they consumed the
board roof.The fire evidently started
about the flue, for the flames could be seen from where we were, at the top of
the stove pipe.School had not been
over more than 30 or 40 minutes.This
was the first building Cal ever saw burn, and it made a lasting impression on
his childish mind.In this fire our
Tennessee history burned and perhaps one other book.Cal had typhoid fever in August and September before the building
burned and had just started back to school when the building burned.Our mother, “Mammy” to Cal, had said, “I
don’t want him to have but two or three studies as he has had typhoid fever and
too many studies might hurt his mind.”Perhaps some of those who like to joke Gregory may believe that he did
have too many studies back there.Anyway, the school house burned and thus our school closed after a
session of about three months, and there was no more school until the fall of
1904.Prof. G. W. Goad, one of the
greatest teachersthe Upper Cumberland
ever knew, was in charge of the school.There were no telephones then in any of our rural sections, and next
morning Cal met the teacher about three hundred yards from the school building
and asked, “Mr. Goad, did you know that the school house burned
yesterday?”He was greatly shocked and
could hardly believe the information he had just received.However, in a matter of a few moments he
arrived on the scene and found that the old school house was in ashes.Many of the pupils did not know of the
burning of the building until they arrived at school.So the teacher informed them that school for the term was over
and sent them home.We look back to
that time nearly 47 years ago and we can still hear some of those boys as they
left for home in a state of high glee and apparently “tickled to death” over
the abrupt closing of school.It was
different with the writer, who loved school and grieved over the burning of the
first place of learning we ever saw or visited for that matter.

The next spring the fathers of
school children of the community got together and decided to prepare to
re-build.So they went into the woods
and cut trees for sills and sleepers and hauled them to the school site.With broadaxes they hewed those timbers and
got them into shape for the new building.The foundation was made of some rather , large, rough, unhewn stones and
was not very substantial.Years later,
Mr. Goad, the teacherwho was terribly
afraid of storms, persuaded our dad and the other directors to have Brack
Carmon, a colored stone mason, to get out the rock and build a solid wall of
masonry for the foundation.This was
done and the building took on a nice appearance with it’s heavy stone wall
foudation.

With the coming of August 1, 1904,
Toby Richmond went to work on the patrons assistance of many of the patrons of
the school.The house was finished in a
matter of some weeks and school opened in Sept. of that year in a new
house.We had to sit on old home-made
benches in the old building and in our early school days, our legs were too
short to reach the floor.In the new
building school started off with a “bang” many boys and girls coming from quite
a distance and entering school.We soon
found that the building was too small.

But back to the erection of this
building.Our father’s farm adjoined
the school property.In fact the school
ground originally came from the same tract as that owned by our father in the
long ago.Our father had a crop of
tobacco, and he told his sons that if they would work hard and get their work
done in worming and suckering tobacco, spraying then being unknown, he would
help on the school building and that we could go along and render some
aid.We worked like “whiteheads” until
that tobacco was finished, which would take until about Tuesday afternoon, thus
giving us four days to spend at the school building.

A number of incidents have come down
through nearly half a century about that building.One of them has to do with Sam Oldham, father of our school
buddy, M. M. or Mance Oldham.He was
working on the ground and David Earps, who died last year, was at work on the
rafters, using a hatchet in his work.Suddenly we saw that hatchet falling and it struck Mr. Oldham right in
the top of the head andbounced
off.It had fallen perhaps ten or
twelve feet and happened to strike Oldham the flat way; that is, the blade did
not strike in a cutting position.It
was a rather hard blow and Mr. Earps apologized at once, but Mr. Oldham’s head
was still hurting him and we still recall his words to Earps: “ It does look
like a man would have more sense than to drop a hatchet on the other fellow’s
head.” We somehow doubted if he had really accepted the apologies of Mr.
Earps.Uncle Sam, as he was called, was
rather quick-tempered and the sudden blow on his head hurt.He reared a large family of sons and
daughters, most of whom still live.Uncle Dave lived to the ripe old age of 86 and he also left quite a
large family.

Another funny incident that occurred
while the school house of near 50 years ago was under construction took place
when the house was nearing completion. Ourfather, commonly known as Dopher Gregory, but really named Thomas Morgan
Gregory, was assisting Richmond in his work of ceiling the house.Mr. Richmond had a habit of filling his
mouth full of nails and then taking them out as he needed them.But in the midst of his work, with mouth
opened as wide as he could get it, and grunting out some sort of inarticulate
sound, he approached our pappy and pointed to his mouth.We still recall how our father stopped his
work, bent his head and looked into the wide-open mouth of Richmond.Then he discovered the trouble.Richmond had a lower tooth with a large
cavity in it.One of the nails he had
in his mouth had gotten into that hollow tooth, with the head of the nail in
the cavity and the other or sharp end extending upward into the roof of
Richmond’s mouth.He could not open his
mouth any wider.Our father began to
try to loosen the nail from the cavity and in about five minutes’ time, he had
the nail out and Richmond closed his mouth once more.

We can still find some of the work
we did in that house that is now old.It was the nailing of ceiling into place in the end of the building at
one’s left hand as he enters.Many,
many events have come and gone since that carefree day and time.

We went to school in this new
building during the terms of 1904, 1905 and 1906.In 1906 we left home for Bowling Green to go to school, but the
old home school was always one of the dearest places in the world to us.We used to ask our younger brother and
sisters to give us the school news as it happened almost daily.Still later we went back to this school and
began to study hard for the teachers’ examination in 1910.We passed this examination with “flying
colors” and began teaching at Dean Hill, a few miles southeast of
Willette.The next year, 1911, we
taught at Mace’s Hill, receiving $50 per month for our first school there.We taught at Mace’s Hill also in 1912, and
then moved away, never to teach again at the place of so many events of our
happy childhood.

The school continued for many years,
somehow growing smaller in the number of students and in interest.Finally last year, it was discontinued and
the building is today used by Brother E. L. Earps as his country store, and he
has a good trade and the esteem of his customers.

Here in the walls of this now
abandoned school room we secured the greater part of our little learning, but
we treasure every, hour spent in this place as a child.here we played and studied and “fit” a
little, and also had our first “puppy love affair.”Here we watched boys and girls stride forward in their studies,
while others lagged and dropped back.Some apparently never could learn their lessons.Others seemingly had no trouble with lessons.Still others could have learned easily, but
they put in their time in mischief or having a good time.Here we saw spelling match after spelling
match.We recall one match, our first
after that attack of typhoid fever, in which we were so absorbed in our
spelling that we did not note that we were rubbing our right hand back and
forth over our right thigh with the regularity of a clock.Our brother and a cousin later made sport of
what we had done so unconsciously, getting a great laugh at us, but we won that
spelling match turning down all we had to meet after being called to take our
seat and begin spelling.Just why we
did that thing that made us somewhat conspicuous, we do not know.But we still recall our intense effort to
spell every word and not to be “turned down” even as far back as our eighth
year.We were in such a strain in
spelling class that we left sweat in our bare footed tracks many, many
times.We do not mean to boast but we
seldom missed a word in spelling and can still recall practically every word we
ever missed in our classes.Our first
word to miss then cry about was “both.”Our next was “pencil.”A third
was “choir” which we had called as if pronounced “chawer,” there are some
others, but not a great many.We do not
mean to boast about the above, nor to brag when we say that we could once spell
every word in Hunt’s Progressive Speller.But that day has gone by and will come never more.The years are taking their toll and memory
is not what it once was.We have labored
and labored and carried a load that has never grown lighter, but appears always
to get a little heavier.We would like
to rest, but find no time nor place.We
have more to do now than ever before in all of our 59 years.In fact we feel that we are going to “have
to hurry” if we get done even half as much as we might desire to
accomplish.But our great consolation
is that the “rest that remaineth to the people of God,” is closer now and seems
not far away.Our playmates of other
years have in part left us, our parents have been gone for many, many years and
numerous other ones have crossed the silent river of death.Sometimes it seems that invisible hands are
beckoning and voices of other years are calling.We expect to respond some day and rejoin those we have loved and
lost, “in the bright summer land of bliss.”